Google+ PR-

After not quite a month of Google+, it appears it's interesting, that it has potential to be better than Facebook, that its initial growth is much faster than Facebook and ...

That its initial growth rate of PR snafus is certainly higher than that of Facebook.

Several issues are involved here. They include lack of preparedness for growth, hardcore attitudes on several issues, and Facebook-like level hypocrisy on the hardcore attitudes.

In many ways, they exemplify what I've said for a couple of years now: Google has in many ways become the new Microsoft. Oh, the products may work better, at least a fair amount of time. But a mix of corporate arrogance and corporate arteriosclerosis (Apple has the first in spades, but not the second, so far) seems to be an issue.

Anyway, the specific Google+ issues and PR?

Let's take a look at each below the jump.





1. Not being prepared for growth. Google has many software engineers, server technicians and others who have, or have had, Facebook accounts. People at the top of the Google food chain have FB accounts, too. Therefore, Google knew full well the unhappiness level many people had with FB. So, not to be prepared for how many people would take it up on its early rounds of invitations, so that invitations kept shutting down? Inexcusable. Not to have adequate server capability ready for that, when it would have been easy to do metrics on the average FB user? Also inexcusable. Not to have devoted more resources to these issues when they became clear? Also inexcusable.

2. How it handled business accounts. I didn't read every detail of Google+ TOS when I signed up. Don't know if you did or not. But, even if it had pretty concrete specifications that said "no business accounts," Google had to know that businesses would jump the queue. Beyond that, what if I own my own small biz but post about it on my personal account? Or do PR or marketing for a big biz?

3. How it has handled anonymous/pseudonymous accounts. First, Google+ has failed to distinguish between the two words. The pseudonymous BugGirl, as my scientist/skeptic/philosopher friends know, is certainly NOT anonymous. Twould be easy to verify that a person starting a Google+ account really is "that" BugGirl or another. Again, this seems to get back to Google laziness, shortsightedness, or both, in expending lack of resources on G+.

GrrlScientist, who also had her account "suspended" by Google+, speaks about this on the Guardian.

Let's not also forget what this G-mail service thread shows: People in Hong Kong have a variety of ways of naming themselves, and people on mainland China have good reasons for wanting true anonymity.

4. Account deletions. Account suspensions might be one thing, but from a PR stance, account deletions are simply inexcusible. To put it bluntly, Google/Google+ has made enemies, something you never want to do in the first month of rolling out a new product.

5. Hypocrisy, especially re point 3. As Google+ friend M.E. Hogan notes, resharing a post from someone else:

There's something seriously wrong when the VP in charge of Google+, +Vic Gundotra gets to use Google+ with a name that isn't legally his, but requires a driver's license from his users to prove their nicknames.

Again, Google+ comes off looking just like the Facebook it was supposed to better. Remember Mark Zuckerberg's dog having an account, long after Marky Mark said FB was for real people? The second half of M.E.'s post relates to point 6.

6. Authoritarianism. Here, Google+ is running the risk of looking like the bad side of another major Internet player, one not yet in social media but surely pondering it: Apple. Steve Jobs can be a dick at times. But, it's usually only after a new product or service has some "legs." Being a dick is also something you don't want to do/be in the first month of a new product rollout.

Being a dick, being cheap and being lazy at a company the size of Google is definitely something you don't want to do in the first month of a new product rollout, especially when previous attempts in the field of social media have been a bit of a flop.

This page sums up several of the problems, above all both the authoritarianism and hypocrisy. Deleting accounts for TOS violations without specifying what they are? Check. Leaving a Coca-Cola account still standing even after multiple complaints? Check.

Google+, right now, you are a dick.